John Kasich Opposes D.C. Statehood Because, Ew, There Are Democrats There

For a country that was partly founded on the idea of opposing "taxation without representation," it's always been a tad odd that those who live in our very capital, the District of Columbia, pay taxes while being denied representation. Especially when you consider that there are more people living in D.C. than in either Vermont or Wyoming. On the bright side, they do get to have the snarkiest license plates in the nation:

Given that the vast majority of DC residents would like to pursue statehood, that it seems pretty unlikely that most people who are not fanatically opposed to a flag redesign would really care either way, it seems a bit weird for anyone to not want them to be a state. This is America! We are supposed to want all the people to vote, right? Like, that's the whole thing about a democracy!

Unless you're John Kasich. In an interview with the Washington Post, Kasich basically came right out and said that he opposed the idea of D.C. statehood specifically because there are too many Democrats in the District.

ARMARO: You voted against statehood for D.C. when you were in Congress.

KASICH: Yes.

ARMAO: Is that still your position, and do you have–

KASICH: Yes, I would it say probably is.

ARMAO: What about voting rights in Congress, voting representatives?

KASICH: Probably not. I don’t know. I’d have to, I mean, to me, that’s just, I just don’t see that we really need that, okay? I don’t know. I don’t think so.

ARMAO: But you realize though that people in D.C. pay taxes, go to war and they have no vote in Congress.

KASICH: Yeah.

ARMAO: How is that–

KASICH: Well look, I am not – I don’t – I am not, because you know what, what it really gets down to if you want to be honest is because they know that’s just more votes in the Democratic Party. That’s what–

ARMAO: So if there were Republicans in the District, you would have a different position?

KASICH: Yeah, okay, well look, they send me a bill, I’m president of the United States, I’ll read your editorials.

It's not "just more votes in the Democratic Party," John Kasich. It's more votes, period. Votes that should count regardless of who they are for! And though this may come as a surprise to you and your friends in the GOP, it's actually not super cool to disenfranchise people specifically because they're not going to vote for your party.

It is, however, lovely of him to say that he would consider looking at a bill to make D.C. a state if he becomes President of These United States, which is definitely a thing that has a chance of happening.

While it may seem odd that this would be something a person running for office would actually admit to, out loud, in an interview in a widely read newspaper, when discussing things like early voting and voter ID laws, it is not entirely unusual for them to admit they are opposed to making it easier for poor people and people of color to vote because "those people" are unlikely to vote Republican. They often say something about "those people" (they mean black people) being in thrall to the Democratic "plantation." (That would be the "plantation" that moved from forcing slaves to build the White House to putting a black guy in it, over Republicans' unending but super not racist objections.)

Anyway, John Kasich's not racist; he just prefers having two senators for Dick Cheney's half-million best friends in Wyoming and none for the 700 thousand people in DC, half of whom only happen to be black.

Robyn Pennacchia is a brilliant, fabulously talented and visually stunning angel of a human being, who shrugged off what she is pretty sure would have been a Tony Award-winning career in musical theater in order to write about stuff on the internet. Previously, she was a Senior Staff Writer at Death & Taxes, and Assistant Editor at The Frisky (RIP). Currently, she writes for Wonkette, Friendly Atheist, Quartz and other sites. Follow her on Twitter at @RobynElyse

You guys, hi, hello, it is almost the holiday weekend, so we are going to share you a real video posted last night by "Doctor" Sebastian "Don't Call Me A Nazi" Gorka, that hilarious old knucklecuck. We guess now that he had to give up (or gave up voluntarily!) his Fox News contract, he just makes videos for the Twitter. Hoo ... ray?

Anyway, Gorka is super-excited that Donald Trump issued that order last night, giving Bill Barr all kinds of new powers to expose the Deep State for what it is and PROVE once and for all that the gremlins who live inside Trump's diarrhea are correct when they say Hillary ordered the Deep State to do an illegal witch hunt to Trump, yadda yadda yadda, you've seen these people huff paint before, we don't have to type it all.

Here is the video, after which Wonkette will either transcribe it OR we will provide our own dramatic interpretation. Which one will it be? We don't know! Would you be able to tell the difference between the two? We don't know!

We want to say right here at the outset that we hate Julian Assange. Aside from the sexual assault allegations against him, and aside from the fact that he's just a generally stinky and loathsome person who reportedly smeared poop on the walls at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, while reportedly not taking care of his cat, an innocent creature, he acted as Russia's handmaiden during the 2016 election, in order to further Russia's campaign to steal it for Donald Trump. All signs point to his campaign being a success!

So we are justifiably happy when bad things happen to Julian Assange. We are happy his name is shit the world over, and that any reputation WikiLeaks used to have for being on the side of freedom and transparency has been stuffed down the toilet where it belongs. We are happy he looked like such a sad-ass loser when the Ecuadorian embassy finally kicked him out and he was arrested.

And quite frankly, we were OK with the initial charge against him recently unsealed in the Eastern District of Virginia. If you'll remember, he was charged with trying to help Chelsea Manning hack a password into the Defense Department, which is not what journalists do. Journalists do not drive the get-away car for sources. Journalists do not hold their sources' hair back while they're stealing classified intel. Assange is essentially accused of doing all that.

Now, put all that aside. Because -- and this is key -- journalists do publish secrets they are provided by sources. That's First Amendment, chapter and verse, American as fucking apple pie and fast-food-induced diabetes. And that is what much of the superseding indictment of Assange unsealed yesterday was about. (And nope, it wasn't about anything regarding Assange's ratfucking the 2016 election or Hillary's emails. Why would the Trump Justice Department prosecute anything about that? It's all about the older Chelsea Manning stuff, the stuff the Obama Justice Department considered charging Assange with, but ultimately declined, because of that little thing called the First Amendment.)